Where I Come From
by d-aisychains2
Summary: "I don't know how you're so familiar to me - or why it feels less like I'm getting to know you and more as though I'm remembering who you are. How every smile, every whisper brings me to the impossible conclusion that I have known you before, I have loved you before - in another time, a different place - some other existence."


As a young girl I loved Pocahontas, the disney princess was my life. The movie was brilliant and brought me unlimited happiness - although it portrayed Native American history badly, but to a small child who wanted to be a princess it didn't matter. I remember wanting to be her so badly, and it really didn't help I was a native american _living_ in a reservation. La Push had been home to all my generations of family, my father was an an orginal member of the council as his father was and as his father before him was.

The stories they told here, they seemed to lace in with Pocahontas. My russet skin and long black hair matched with Pocahontas' look and it drove my mother mad. My hair was a pain to wash, dry and brush because I'd insisted growing it long so it dangled just before my butt.

My name, Olivia, meant peace and that's what I liked. Peace, I never was a fighter although I always stood up for what I believed in. My sister Leah taught me that, I always looked up to her as a kid, everything she said to me was like precious gold. I'd either write it down, or force myself to learn it off by heart. As much as she'd laugh and make fun of me as a kid for dressing up like Pocahontas, she would willingly help me pick out clothes from my wardrobe that was along the lines of the disney princess. She'd dress me up as my little brother Seth would laugh and judge which one was best.

I got on well with the rest of my family too. Dad and I got on too well sometimes, he adored me as much as I adored him. He called me his little Princess and would give me kisses on my head. He would never admit to his friends, Charlie and Billy how much he loved the movie, nearly as much as me. Everytime we would sit down, or he'd be taking care of me when my Mom would go into town for groceries he'd always ask me to put on the 'silly princess movie'. For my first ever pet, he bought me a grey speckled rabbit. I named it Meeko after Pocahontas' racoon. (I'd wanted a racoon but Mom had told me it was either her, or the racoon. It was safer to choose her over the racoon) I can't ever remember crying so hard any time else only when Meeko died. Seth had wanted to play with him one day when I'd visited a friends and when I'd returned home I'd seen the grey speckled fur littered all over the garden - a fox, apparently. I cried that day into my Dad's arms, and that day he missed fishing - He never missed a fishing trip. _Ever._

When I turned ten, a few years after Meeko's tragic demise, I tried to put all the Pocahontas stuff behind me but I couldn't help thinking of it when Dad would take me on hikes and I'd feel a gust of wind move through my hair. I couldn't help but think of it, and smile to myself. I know my friends thought I was strange, I mean I had a very strange sense of style that was literally only khaki and suede things. It wasn't even very Pocahontas-y but I thought it was.

This fully changed when I turned fourteen and enrolled at the local highschool. It was all different. I'd joined Leah's school and I got to ride to school in her car. She hung out at the "Popular" table with all the jocks and her boyfriend Sam. It was weird seeing her with Sam in school, and also with people who I don't really think she even liked. For a while, I'd tried to include myself in Leah's junior clique but of course, Leah had put her foot down and told me to find my own friends or she'd call Mom. I did soon find my own friends, and the peer pressure cut me off from my Pocahontas vibe and I cut my hair to my shoulder, threw all my merchandise in a cardboard box and put it under my bed. I swapped my khaki and suede for stuff that everyone wore. I started to be _normal_ , I hung out with different girls than I had in middle school. We hung out with boys, and went on sleepovers and camped out in the beach and I eventually _forgot_ about how much I loved that Disney princess.

I never had a boyfriend in high school. Atleast not one to write about, there had been a few guys who I'd convinced myself that I _loved_ but in the end, I always compared the guys I liked and I to Leah and Sam. Seeing how really in love they were always put my expectations up high. Leah loved Sam to death. They were perfect. Sam got on with the family amazingly, and it all seemed like it was going to work out perfectly.

A few years later, when I was going into my junior year and Seth was becoming a freshman it all seemed to turn to dust. A few weeks before there anniversary, Sam disappeared into thin air for about two weeks or so. Leah worked her ass of putting posters everywhere, driving all the way to Seattle, even to Portland just to see if anyone regconized him.

Then he just.. arrived back one day. He didn't tell Leah where he'd been, or what he'd been doing. It broke Leah apart, although she tried to understand maybe he was too scared or hurt to talk about it but it bugged her to bits. It went on for weeks, the whole secretive thing Sam had going on until our usual family BBQ we all sat and had fun and ate, so did Sam and I'd assumed it had all gone back to normality. Leah and Sam sat together, laughing and joking. They looked really in love, and it seemed like _nothing_ come between them.

But it ended quickly, because that night Sam returned to our house. He called Leah on the phone to ask her to come downstairs he would be over in five minutes and he had something to tell her. Emily, my cousin and I convinced her it must be a proposal, or maybe his reason for running away. Leah was estatic, she even reapplied her makeup and changed out of her PJ's into normal clothes. She waited downstairs and Emily and I gazed out the window waiting until Sam's car rolled up. We saw him clambering out and walking up to Leah, we couldn't help listen - we were sourly dissapointed because Sam didn't come to explain him going missing or to propose. He told Leah quietly that he didn't love her anymore and they were over. It tore her apart, her whole world had shut down and so had she.

She cried into our arms that night. We all mourned for Leah that night, but I could see something distracting Emily that night. Soon enough we found out Sam was pursuing Emily, Emily assured Leah she didn't like Sam. He wasn't her type of guy. Weeks later, Emily told us Sam had called over a few times but she'd told him to get lost and not to call again. Then we didn't hear anything, Emily went quiet until she was attacked by a bear. It seemed to all change, we stayed by her bedside for as much as we could but we weren't the only ones. So did Sam.

Leah caught Sam sitting by Emily's bedside back at her own home while Emily recovered at home holding her hand. They were staring lovingly into eachother's eyes as Sam's flowers from a week before wilted on the mantle piece. It re-broke my sister's heart, she left quickly dumping the Poppy's she'd picked in the bin. She hadn't talk to Emily since, it had been a year and I could see a change in my sister - a big one. She'd become cold, snappy, and altogether angry. Her instant outbreaks of anger didn't do anyone good, especially Dad.

Times like these, when I was upstairs doing my due history essay when the fights between Leah, Dad and Mom would start, I would lay back on my bed and try ignore it but this time it all seemed difference. I barely noticed the knock on the door because of the shouting. Seth entered my bedroom, with a sad face. His brown eyes glossy. He sits on my bed and sighs.

"Will you go downstairs Olivia? Try sort it? You're good at sorting things out.. I don't feel well, I have a really bad headache.. I need her to stop shouting."

Although Seth looked older than me, and sometimes came across it in the way he was so loud and confident, I felt protective of him. I liked to take care of my younger brother, when it came to girls, or friends.

"I'll go see what I can do." I murmur, putting my history copy down. "I'll get you some medicine for your headache too."

I stand up and brace myself for the war I'm about to enter downstairs. As I descend down the stairs, I realize its better if I listen in first and actually hear what they're talking about. I put my head up to the door and listen to my sisters distressed shouts.

"How can you be so cruel about your own flesh and blood, Leah?" Dad says, his tone serious.

"Emily isn't my flesh and blood anymore. Family doesn't do that to eachother." Leah snaps bitterly. Of course it was about Emily. The big fights usually did revolve around them. I already knew that this fight had happened because of the wedding invitation Leah had found under the fruit bowl this morning - Sam and Emily had already decided to marry and they thought it would be smart to send a wedding invitation here. Mom had RSVP'd but forgot to discard of the rest of the invitation and of course, Leah had been balistic.

"You can't disregard her for this, Leah. People fall in and out of love all the time. You cannot choose who you love.. They love eachother, Leah. You and Sam obviously didn't feel the same.." Mom tries to reason softly but it drives Leah more angry. "Your cousin is getting married and we will _all_ attend the wedding."

Leah's voice was painful and it was evident she was crying from her tone. "He fell out of love with _me_! He didn't love _me_! I loved _him_! We were going to marry.." Her shaky voice dropped to a whisper. "H-have kids.."

Her voice returns stronger. "I hate her - she's vile. How dare she call us family?!" She screams. "How dare she invite us? After all the pain she's caused!"

"I didn't raise my daughter to be so hateful and cruel! Why can't you be like Emily or even Olivia? They're so peaceful, Leah. They don't have a hateful bone in there body." Dad says, disappointed. Theres silence now apart from some heavy breaths. I'm guessing its Leah, who seems to be right inside the door.

"Leah..?" My Dad calls quietly but she's silent. Then it comes, the god awful scream of pain. The scream ripples from the living room outwards - It was full of pain, anger and terror. There is a loud thump and now I hear my mother screaming. I open the door fast. My heart thumps faster than ever as I look around the room, the first two things I notice is my Dad in his recliner chair gripping his heart as his face starts to go pale, and the second is the huge grey wolf cowering the corner with my sister nowhere to be seen.


End file.
